Putting Eire Center Stage

Forget the green beer.

Forget the silly shamrocks and bagpipes and soda bread.

And fer the love of God, would you please forget that disgustin' corned beef and cabbage?

Tanks, man, tanks.

Now, if you'd really like to raise a toast to old St. Pat and his beloved Eire, buy a ticket to the theater.

Just go and sit and listen. It's the kingly stories of the little island that matter most.

"Words and language mean everything to them. The poetry, the rhythm," reverently explains Mark Rhea, who has spent his career bringing those words to life for local audiences.

Today there's abundant life for those words around Washington, due in large part to Rhea's Keegan Theatre, this year celebrating its 10th anniversary.

Rhea and several others formed the company with a two-pronged mission: to produce great American works in a spare, unpretentious style that focused on the strength of the actors and to present new and classic Irish plays with the same raw intimacy.

Its first year out, Keegan staged three productions. This year the fast-growing company will put on eight shows in Washington and spend two months touring in Ireland, a summer stint that has become a treasured tradition at Keegan. (Rhea and almost all of the founding members are of Irish descent.)

To celebrate its first decade, Keegan brought back four of its most successful productions, including "The Hostage," on stage at Church Street Theater in Dupont Circle. The 1958 Brendan Behan play, a typically Irish mix of anxiety, sorrow, wit and song, explores old tensions and loyalties as they boil when members of the Irish Republican Army hold an innocent British soldier captive in a whorehouse.

This week marked the world premiere of "Last Days of the Killone Players," by Eric Lucas, one of Keegan's founders and artistic directors. The bittersweet comedy, at Arlington's Theatre on the Run, finds a cast of community players facing the demise of their playhouse days (and with it, their traditions) at the hand of Ireland's astonishing economic growth.

Keegan by no means holds a monopoly on Irish theater in Washington. "When we started it didn't feel like there was that much being done," Rhea says. "But over the last six years, it seems like there's been more and more." The trend reflects, as much as anything, the quality and abundance of new plays coming out of that country.

Solas Nua, a young troupe dedicated solely to the production of fresh Irish works, opens the curtains on "Portia Coughlan" at Northeast Washington's H Street Playhouse on Thursday. The haunting Marina Carr drama centers on a young woman tormented by the death of her twin.

Irish plays have also been produced this year by such powerhouse companies as Studio Theatre and smaller groups, including the Washington Stage Guild.

Kerry Waters Lucas, another of Keegan's artistic directors, explains the appeal this way: "It seems to be something people need. There are so many images coming at us from different places, but in the theater, you still have the word. People are hungry for story. And the way the Irish writers tell it is what's so compelling."

Yes, and cheers to that. Or better yet: Sl¿inte!